13 Things You Didn't Know About Friday 13th Part III

Director of photography Gerald Feil had been researching how to produce 3D effects on film for months before being hired for the Friday The 13th Part 3 production. Under his guidance, the film introduced a new way of creating the traditional over/under 3D illusion using the brand-new ArriVision system and polarised glasses.

No longer were the red and blue plastic lenses necessary to achieve the effect. The Arrivision 3D camera system used a dual-lens adapter, splitting the 35 mm film frame in two along the middle, with the left eye image in the top half of the frame and the right eye image in the bottom half (hence the term over/under).

As many of these scenes were at night, they required intricate lighting for the 3D effect to work, alongside an unusually time-consuming staging requiring weeks of advance planning. Scenes had to be shot multiple times from multiple angles. All of this required a long, arduous shooting schedule, at least half of which was at night, with the actors hanging around for long periods of disorienting inactivity between takes.

Adding to the difficulties, the ArriVision camera set up pioneered by the film wasn't really ready at that point for shooting a motion picture: the same was true of the brand new Kodak emulsion being used, which created its own issues.

All of this gamechanging work would be paid forward when other 3D movies like Jaws 3D went into production, taking advantage of the systems tested during the production of Friday The 13th Part 3.